Category Archives: Blog

People looking to get sleeping bags and camping equipment in Karachi can now get Coleman Brand at MAKRO on very reasonable prices. Its located in SITE after you cross the Railway bridge on the way to Orangi from SITE DC office—also known as Habib Bank Chowrangi.

The Second Dureji Expedition is scheduled for the 27th – 29th of January 2007. It will be a 2 night / 3 day trip with departure at 8 a.m. on Saturday, the 27th of January 2007, travelling staight to the base of Andahar Mountain (height – 4,000 ft) and setting up camp there for both nights. The second day we’ll 4wheel up the mountain, have lunch there, then return back to camp for the night. Return scheduled for the Monday, Jan 29th.

“Dureji Expedition” is a 4×4 Jeep Eco Rally being organized by the Outdoor Adventures & 4×4 Club of Pakistan. This is an environmentally conscious rally which aims to provide owners of 4×4’s to experience the beautifully rugged yet pristine areas of Baluchistan very close to Karachi.

The object of the “Dureji Expedition” is to drive through various within the jurisdiction of Dureji Tehsil. The route consists mainly of Shingle tracks which are primarily used by camels and infrequently by vehicles, thereby providing ample opportunity for drivers to test their skill. The Expedition also aims at traveling in a group to ensure that problems faced by any particular member with respect to vehicle breakdown, etc., can be jointly dealt with and resolved, removing the fear of being stuck in some remote valley with no help. Rest assured, we will all be there.

The Expedition is scheduled to depart from Karachi on the 17th of November, 2006 from Defence Phase V and shall consist of 3 traveling days and 2 night stays. All participants will have to bring their own food and water and other necessities, whereas excellent camping ground with electricity and toilets and kitchen, etc., will be available at the camp site. The area we shall be driving through is located just North – North East of the Hub Dam which is visible on Google Earth next to Karachi.

We already have over fifteen 4×4 Jeep owners enlisted for the Expedition including a few families. If you are interested in joining this expedition, please let us know through the contact form along with names and number of people intending to travel with you and the kind of vehicle you shall be driving.

At the milestone “Aghore 42 Kms” on the Coastal Highway driving towards Ormara/Pasni a small sign post on the left indicates the track for “Sapat Check Post” of the Coast Guards. Visible from the highway on a clear day, one can see the tallest mud volcano in the world. ‘Chandragup’ standing at nearly 500 feet in height, the magnitude of its immense size gets noticeable as one gets closer. The second volcano ‘Ramagup’ also becomes visible, at nearly 250 feet with a massive crater in the center filled with greenish-brown water bubbling every once in a while.

!/images/2006/fahad/fahad_stuck_1.jpg 160×120! Fahad wrote in from Islamabad: “My jeep got stuck in Rawal dam & it took three days day & night effort & finally with the help of Col.Ikram (Pak Army) by the help of chain cuppy we pulled it out of that slushy mud. The clutch plate had slipped, I restored it again & beauty is back on the road.” It was truly, deeply stuck, as the pictures below show:

There are a few Jeep workshops in Karachi who do world class restoration work. I had known that many of their jeeps from Karachi end up abroad, with one great example in the Smithsonian Museum in the World War II section, and another in the New York Museum of Arts. Recently I found out that there was even a documentary made by an American channel about the local jeep rebuilders:

by Kaleem Omar

KARACHI: “East is East and West is West, / And never the twain shall meet…” wrote Rudyard Kipling more than a hundred years ago. But what he said doesn’t always apply. In this context, consider, for example, an event that will take place at about 4 o’clock this afternoon in the small town of Koh-i-Taftan on the Pakistan-Iran border. Koh-i-Taftan (let’s call it Taftan for short) is not exactly the hub of the universe, and many Pakistanis may have never heard of it. Nor would they be any the wiser if one were to tell them that it is about 60 km northwest of Koh-i-Dalil. Yet it is here, in Taftan, that East and West will meet today, in a manner of speaking.

“ /> This book is number 1 on ‘Outside Magazines list of The 25 (Essential) Books for the Well-Read Explorer’:http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200301/200301_adventure_canon_1.html and National Geographic magazine named “Wind, Sand and Stars” the third best adventure book of all time. So it had to be good… and turned out to be jaw droppingly amazing. This is not just a book – it’s sheer poetry. See Outside magazine’s review below:

Ever since my childhood I’ve been riding in Jeeps and dreaming about them. After reading volumes of illustrated War history books, I spent hours in my uncle’s CJ-3A imagining myself to be a World War II soldier. A few years later my father bought my eldest brother his first Jeep. It was a Willy’s M38. I still remember that day; it was our very first Jeep.

They were on their way to Khuzdar from Karachi, following the old camel trail, when they came across a wizened old local. He was surprised to come upon this caravan of jeeps on this little used dirt track and asked them where they were headed. To Khuzdar, they said. The old man stared at them in stunned disbelief- “sahib, aap ko malum nahin key Khuzdar tak to eik bohut achhi sarak jati hai.” But given the choice, the members of Karachi’s Offroaders Club would rather choose a dirt track than a tarred road.